Belonging and capital: Insights from the schooling of Syrian children in Turkey

Migrant and refugee integration policies operate under the assumption that acquisition of host country language will build newcomers’ human capital as well as their social capital. Accordingly, the increase in human capital will move them out of economic marginalization, while the increase in social capital, in the sense of gaining access to more and varied social networks, will also help promote social cohesion. 

Contrary to these expectations, several studies have revealed how language-learning does not automatically translate into either economic or social mobility, since the language’s value continues to depend on the speaker’s existing social location. 

In Turkey, where a large Syrian population resides under temporary protection, the teaching of Turkish to Syrian children has become an educational priority, both in accordance with the UN Refugee Agency’s refugee education policy and with the support of European Union funding. 

Based on longitudinal research with a cohort of primary school students, who attended special adaptation classes in the 3rd grade because they had not acquired sufficient Turkish skills during the first two grades, this seminar will examine the relation between language-learning, development of social and human capital and the emergence of a sense of belonging at least to school communities. Two findings will be highlighted: 

1. Rather than language-learning increasing social capital, the link between language-learning and social capital works in the opposite direction. That is, it is the children with already higher social capital who are able to learn the language. 
2. Instead of facilitating the building of social capital, schools act as sites which hamper it. Consequently, children become unable to support one another’s learning.

About the speaker

Dr Aslı İkizoğlu Erensü is an Assistant Professor at Sabancı University, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. 

She holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Minnesota and an MA in Sociology from the University of Essex. She is interested in regimes of mobility and politics of humanitarianism, and has worked on (i) how refugees are constituted as subjects of intervention at the intersection of the two, and (ii) how the experience of asylum is locally produced in Turkish cities. 

She has published on these issues in both Turkish and English-language journals, including Citizenship Studies and Journal of Refugee Studies. Her other research projects include examining the politics of care in the recent trend of outmigration from Turkey by questioning how ideals and practices of motherhood impact women’s political subjectivities. She has most recently received a Marie Curie-Sklodowska Individual Fellowship (2021-23) for her project titled Learning the Language of Belonging: Barriers to Inclusion in Refugee Education. The project aimed to understand how language preparatory classes frame conditions of social acceptance and how refugee communities respond to such educational initiatives.